Episode AH2391A: Hello, so nice to have you with us here today At Home. It’s always a joy to know that there are folks just like you who take time out of their busy day to spend a half hour with us. And hopefully, we can give you recipes that will not be so challenging to you you say, well, I could never make that. But just recipes that will wet your appetite and you’re going to say, I think I could do that, at least I’m gonna give it a try. That’s what we’re going to do today. Today we’re making an old fashioned beef pot pie. My mom, used to make this and today I’m gonna be using cubes of beef but she made it with ground meat or ground chuck. And my mother could whip one of these up so quick and it smelled so good. And we’re gonna make some accompanying dishes to go along with this beef pot pie and we’re gonna get started, so stay with us, right after this message, we’ll be back. Here’s today’s At Home Hint, beef provides complete protein, with eight essential amino acids, to your diet. It also is a good source of iron and zinc. If you’ve got a helpful hint that you’d like to share, we want to hear from you. Send your hint to At Home Hints, CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania, one, five, one, four, eight dash one, four, nine, nine. Well, to get started to make our old fashioned beef pot pie I have in my dutch oven, you need a nice deep pot because you’re gonna keep adding ingredients to this. I have a couple of tablespoons of oil and what you do next is you take some beef cubes. And I, you know, sometimes you get beef stew, ’cause basically that’s what this is is beef stew that has a crust on it and there’s big chunks of beef in there. Well, it takes long to cook them so you don’t want to have great, big cubes of beef. This is the size I think is just perfect because they cook quickly, and they taste good, you don’t have to keep wrestling with a knife and a fork when you’re trying to eat your meal. But let your oil get good and hot, in your pan, and I just add, this is just plain flour with a little bit of pepper in it. Lay off the salt, we don’t need to use the salt so much and you just kind of give this a quick coating of flour because, remember like we talked about before, when we talked about gravy, those drippings in the bottom of that pan when you have used a flour dusting on the meat is what make a good, rich, tasty gravy. And that’s what you want because not only does it make the flavor taste good it looks better because it gets rich and brown. So basically what I’m doing, a little bit at a time, is just taking these beef cubes that I have covered with flour, dust it off a little bit, shake the excess off, drop it in the bottom of your pan. Okay, little bit at a time and you want to make sure that when you put them in that you’re covering the bottom of the pan with these in one layer, you don’t want them bunched on top ’cause they have to brown evenly. Because again, it’s those drippings, as little bits of that flour in the bottom of that pan that browns that makes good, rich gravy. So, this is about, I would say, a pound, this will make a nice, big pot pie that will feed six to eight people, depending on the appetites in your home. If you’ve got children, it will feed probably 10 but if you’ve got men that like to eat or you’ve got growing boys, be prepared, it will probably not feed that quite that many. So, we just turn it around here, make sure it’s good and coated, shake off the excess, keep dropping it in. And it’s nice to trim all the excess fat off of, any fat that you can get off the beef it’s best because you don’t need that extra, those extra calories and that extra cholesterol, okay. So I’m gonna turn this fire up a little bit ’cause it really needs to get cranking because you want to brown this very quickly, okay. Let me just make sure I have my heat up as I high as I need to, here we go, whoa, not that high. Okay, basically, when this grease gets good and hot in here, this will brown up very quickly and as you can see, it’s starting to brown, okay. And we’re gonna let that go ahead and brown, while that’s browning, like I said, keep it in a single layer in there, you don’t want it to cover up and you wanna keep watching because you might have add a little extra oil if there’s a lot of flour on your meat, it will absorb the oil. And that’s okay, but you just, they can’t be real dry while it’s browning or it won’t brown. All right, next, we’re going to take our onion and this is half of a large onion. And just chop it, it doesn’t have to be fancy chop, trust me, just chop it so that nobody gets a great, big piece of onion because that’s not very tasty, okay. And we’re gonna give it a rough cut, okay. Remember I told you, if you have one of those knives that you can, it’s easy to do it by taking a chef’s knife and just after you’ve roughly cut it, just go over it again with that chef’s knife. Kinda like we do, nuts or anything else that we’re chopping up. Okay, that’s a rough cut but I’ll take my chef’s knife and just kind of go over it. Seems to be quicker for me that way, since I don’t do the fancy cut that all those other chefs do, this is the easiest way for me to do it. And you still get the same result. You know, I never want to be intimidated because I can’t do something, I want to keep trying because, you know, if you don’t try, you never learn. I mean, the letters that we’ve receive from some of you folks out there said oh, you know, I would be afraid to make this or I’ve never tried to make pies, because I was afraid, don’t be afraid. If you never try, you’ll never know if you can or not. Okay, you’re, the meat is browning beautifully now, you can see the oil is being absorbed, you want to turn that over some more. We’re gonna keep the heat pretty high on this ’cause this has to brown real good, okay. While we’re waiting for that to get started, we’re gonna make an accompaniment to this dish which is a dessert that we need to get started ’cause it has to cook a little while. Rice pudding is something, one of the camera men were telling me, so, oh, you know, there’s so many different ways to make rice pudding and Dale, you’re right, there are. There’s hundreds of ways but this is the way that my mother-in-law told me, like I’ve told you so many times, she is a good cook. This is the way my husband enjoys rice pudding. You start out with one cup of rice and you cook it until the water, you cover it with water, and you cook it only until the water is absorbed. You don’t even drain it, if there’s a little bit of water, do not drain the rice, okay. Then you take one can of sweetened condensed milk, that’s not evaporated milk, that’s sweetened condensed milk. Much thicker than regular evaporated milk or plain whole milk and it’s sweetened. And no, I would not say that this is a diet recipe, let’s just say it like that. This is tasty and good but it does have this very thick milk in it. Here I am with the lid sticking up in my hand, that’s not a very good safety rule there, okay. So we add one can of sweetened condensed milk, now I’m going to take the same can and I’m gonna fill it with regular milk, sweet milk, okay. And we’re gonna put that in there, I’ve got a couple of utensils here that I don’t need. We’re gonna add that to our rice, the meats still browning beautifully. Can’t rush beef, you have to go with the beef when it’s ready. So, we have added the sweetened condensed milk, we’ve added a can of regular milk, now we’re adding a can of water. You say, oh brother, well, wait til you try it and you taste it, you’ll understand. This is going to cook for about an hour on a very, very low. And I want to get my temperature just right. You can have it high to start when you’re cooking the rice but once the rice is cooked, this has to go on a very low flame because for one thing, it will scorch on you. Now, after you have added the milk, it seems like, boy is that watery. But see, that will thicken up as it cooks. And it will get the most beautiful color. The other thing we want to add to that is a chunk of butter, and I’ll say about a half a stick, whoops! Well, we don’t want to use that, it’s covered with onions now so let’s take this other piece that didn’t jump out of my hand. Okay, and we’re gonna add the butter to that, all right. Next, we’re going, you can use as a flavoring either cinnamon or nutmeg. Now, today I’m using cinnamon, usually I use nutmeg and tell you the truth, I couldn’t find the nutmeg so we’re using cinnamon. But you can use either one, it’s fine. And just cover the top of it with cinnamon, okay. I would give it a quick stir, making sure that it’s going to town, you’ll want to come back to this occasionally and just make sure that it’s doing what it’s supposed to, okay. If it seems like it’s cooking up very quickly, then you need to turn the heat down, it does not need to be that high of a heat. In fact, I’m going to come back to this in a couple of minutes because we’ve got something else to add to that. Now, let’s take a look, again, at the meat. Boy, it’s getting nice and brown, you see how nice and brown that is, that’s what you’re lookin’ for. Okay, to that, we’re going to add our chopped onion, I’m just gonna take this off the board the easiest way I know how, okay. We add the chopped onion, nothing smells better, believe me, than onions frying with beef that has been browned. All right and to that then, once that gets started, okay, it gets mixed up, we’re gonna add some water because in a stew, the principle behind the cooking of a stew is you add your meat, your vegetables, potatoes, carrots, whatever to this but it has to be submerged in a liquid because the liquid is what cooks it and makes it tender. So to this, I tell ya another thing I like to do, I, well, let’s add the water, okay. You’re gonna add quite a bit of water to cover it, in fact. Now, if you have a beef stock, add your beef stock, if you have bouillon cubes that you have maybe some extra bouillon cubes or some beef stock,. Here’s what I like to do, when I have a good, rich gravy, you know, sometimes we have some gravy left over from the Sunday dinner and you think, boy, that’s good gravy, I hate to get rid of it. Well, don’t take your ice cube tray and take little pieces of plastic wrap and put them inside each of the cups of your ice cube tray, pour your cold gravy into those, there’s like, I think 12, a dozen in each tray. Set it in the freezer, when it’s frozen solid just take the two pieces of the plastic wrap and twist them, then you have a good start for dropping a couple of those into a pot of beef stew, it just adds to the flavor. Anytime you have good flavor, you don’t want to discard it, you never want to get rid of it, okay. So that’s what I would do here and that way, you drop a couple of those in and you, this has to really get to a roaring, roaring boil, okay. So while that’s cooking, we’re gonna go head and do our carrots. You put the carrots in first ’cause they would take longer to cook than the potatoes would, all right. And this is just a rough cut, let me see if I can find my other knife. I guess I must of left in the dishwasher. Okay, but, anyway, we’re gonna give these a rough cut. And you can add as many or as few carrots as you would need and as you cut them just start dropping them into your stew. Remember, your stew is something that is a liquid that is cooking, the liquid is cooking the vegetables and the meat. Usually very gently, you can’t hurry up a stew, it’s usually a less tender cut of meat is what you’re using when you’re stewing beef. So, we are just giving this a cut, these are very rough cuts but they’re pretty uniform, if you have a great, big, thick carrot, you need to make sure you trim it down because you don’t want to get a piece of carrot that is not completely cooked. So, uniform is keeping them uniform in size is a must when you’re doing stews. All right, so we’re gonna add our carrots. Now, I like a lot of carrots and so my family does, so I tend to add lots of carrots, okay. And again, you just, it’s a rough cut, you’re not, it doesn’t’ have to be fancy in fact it shouldn’t be fancy because a stew has a lot of different vegetables in it and you’re not looking at each particular vegetable by itself, okay. So again, we keep cooking, cooking. We’re gonna keep adding some more water because now that we’ve added all those carrots, it’s almost impossible to get this boiling, there we go, without more water. Let’s take a little look at this, the rice again, rice is lookin’ good. When it gets about here, you know you’re on the right track. See how it’s already changed colors, it’s picking up, that cinnamon is getting evenly distributed throughout the rice. The thing you have to watch about this is the rice will tend to settle to the bottom of the pan and if you don’t have one of these non-stick pans, you could have some major problems because it will stick to the bottom and it will burn if you don’t keep, just keep after it. Keep it on the move, as they say. That’s the principle behind making sure, when it says stir constantly or keep stirring, or stir occasionally, what they want you to do, in that recipe, is just keep those ingredients moving in that pan so that the heat does not pull them down and start to really burn them. And that happens very quickly with anything with rice, happens very quickly if you’re browning, I have one particular pot that is a stainless steel pot, I thought boy, stainless steel, that’s the top of the line, that’s what, but every time I use that pot no matter what I cook in it, it burns. It’s got a hot spot, which means that probably that particular place in that pan, the metal, the stainless still is probably a little thinner than the rest of the pot. So, as you get to, you’re using your cookware, you’re probably realizing, I have a pot that does the same thing. You want to stay away from that if you’re making anything with milk or with rice because it will definitely stick to it. Okay, that’s on it’s way. This is roaring boiling, just the way we like it. Okay, basically, the meat is cooking, the carrots are cooking, everything’s going to town, just the way we like it. Let’s put a little bit parsley, I have some fresh parsley that I’ve chopped, let’s put some of that in for flavor. You can season a beef stew anyway you want, this is just the way my mom happened to make it and we really liked it this way. Now, this is a little fast, need to cut this down, whoops, wrong way. Need to cut this down just a little bit because it doesn’t need to go quite that ferociously but you need to get it going, you need to get it good and hot so that it continues to boil as you’re adding things. Next what we would be adding would be potatoes. And these are, I like to use the red potato because they’re a more tender potato. Again, I would suggest that you try to keep them uniformly in size so that they cook evenly. Whoops, so we don’t have one great big chunk of potato and another small chunk. That large chunk of potato will probably be hard in the center and that doesn’t taste good. So these little things, as you’re preparing, yo, this is exactly what I was afraid was gonna happen. Okay, the rice cooked over, but see, this is exactly what I’m tell you, by keeping the fire low, I didn’t turn it down and I should have, just keep it low. We need to clean up over here. One thing for sure, the pot doesn’t wait for anybody, does it, if it’s gonna boil over, it’s gonna boil over no matter what. But I would suggest that you wipe your pot off because if you don’t, it will leave an aroma in the whole house that everybody’s not gonna enjoy. Just turn it down, I had it going much too high. Okay, it will be fine, not to worry, happens all the time. Okay, to this beef stew now, we’re gonna add our potatoes. And I would say this is probably a couple, two and a half pound, probably don’t need all of those. I would say a few more. If you have family that really enjoys potatoes, then of course, you’d want to add more potatoes and maybe less carrots or whatever. But just keep in mind that no recipe has to be exactly the way you read it in a book because you can incorporate what you like or what you don’t like in your own recipes. Okay, now a stew, the importance of a stew is to let this cook long, for a long time at a low temperature. And because of, we don’t have that much time, I have one that I have prepared but I want to show you what else to do with this. Let me check this rice again so we don’t end up having a, there we go, see, that’s still getting thick. All right, good. Okay, we’re gonna let this cook a little bit and I’m going to show you what to do. Dale, how much time do we have here, so I know what we’re doing, okay. Let me show you how we’re going to make our coleslaw. This is just a very simple recipe but it’s very good. We have taken our cabbage, keep my eye back there so to make sure nothing’s happening without my knowledge of it. And we have just rough, it’s very, very fine cut. This was not done with a grater, this was done with a knife and sometimes people use their grater and it makes, if you don’t have a solid head of cabbage, it makes it so watery, so this is just a rough cut. And we’re going to add a little salt, not too much, some pepper, I know you miss my pepper mill and my salt shaker, but it’s not here today but we’ll have one, okay. And then, I just take plain mayonnaise and people say, oh, Arlene, you make such good coleslaw, what do you, what’s your secret ingredient? There’s not secret ingredient, all it is is mayonnaise, cabbage, salt and pepper, and your little bit of carrot in there, and that’s it. And you toss this, okay. You can use the light mayonnaise, you can use the reduced calorie, the no cholesterol, you can use all of those, they’re fine, believe me, they’re fine. And anything that you want to add to this, if you’re family like green peppers, a lot, sometimes, if I’m having company, I will add green peppers to it. They can be cut very fine along with some carrots. People can put, they put all kinds of dressings on this but this is what we have found that everybody, when I make it, this is what they like. Okay, so that’s why I stick with that and we’re just gonna put this in our bowl. Very simple but a good accompaniment to a stew because you don’t want a big, heavy salad with a stew because you have so many good ingredients and good vegetables in your stew that you don’t want to add more and more vegetables to it Okay, let’s take a look back here and see what’s happening. I don’t know if we can get a look at this or not. Okay, see how that’s, even that broth is not real watery, it’s got some thickening to it because of the flour that we have used. Now, I’m not going to do it because this dish is not done but I’m going to show you, in a couple of minutes, what I do with this when these potatoes are pretty, not real soft but pretty soft. By then I mean you can take a fork and place them in it and come out pretty easily. But with still some substance, I would then make a thickening and when I make a thickening I take flour and water and thicken it and I would add it just, not a real thick consistency but a medium thick consistency. And then, I take this out and I put it in my baking dish and after I have it in my baking dish, we make an herb crust and that’s the part I want to show you. ‘Cause this still needs to cook some more and I’m not gonna rush it along. Okay, let me do a little clean up here. We’re gonna take a crust, this is a pie crust, gonna add a little flour to it, okay. And, you know, I’m going to be honest with you, this is one of those refrigerated crusts because I was in a hurry today and didn’t have the time to do. So I just, I thought, well, I’m gonna try those and these work fine, they really do. When you’re in a hurry, of course, there’s nothing like good old fashioned, homemade pie crust but these are not bad. But what I do with this, I take some garlic salt and I will sprinkle that over top of this crust because I like to make the herb crust, you can put a plain crust if you want to but I like the herb crust, the idea of an herb crust. Then this is basil, I sprinkle some basil over top, basil’s wonderful. Okay, and as much or as little as you like, we like basil, so I put a lot on. Then I have some parsley flakes, okay, and we’re just putting the parsley flakes all over. Now, once your beef stew is in the casserole bowl, and I’m gonna show you when we come back, then you would put your pie crust over top just let it fall into the beef stew and you crimp it around the edge of the pan and you bake it in the oven for about 35 minutes at 400 degrees, that’s what makes it the pot pie. Up until then it was just a beef stew but putting a crust on it makes it the pot pie. And when we come back, after this next message, we’re going to show you exactly what it looks like when it comes out of the oven. Don’t go away, we’ll be right back.
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Well, here we are with our beef pot pie, this is what it looks like when it’s all done. Isn’t it beautiful? Nice crust on the top with those good herbs in and we have our coleslaw that’s a great accompaniment to it with just a very simple dressing that is basically mayonnaise, salt, and pepper. You have to use a good mayonnaise, thought, don’t buy a cheap type mayonnaise, use a good mayonnaise. And our rice pudding, even though it’s still pretty hot, I’d still like you to see that as it cools, it will thicken, we’ve added a few raisins to it, this is still pipping hot, let it cool down and as it cools it will thicken, and thicken and I’ll tell you, your family is in for a real treat if they like rice pudding. Let me serve you a little portion of this pot pie so you get an idea of what you’re looking for when it’s your turn to make one. I think that’s a little large piece of crust here, let me go half. The crust is wonderful, normally what I do is take the crust off and set it on the plate first and then dip in for all the goodies, okay. And that’s our good carrots, potatoes, and our beef. Beautifully done, we’ve added a few peas to this one which you’re more than welcome to do. And as you can see, this is a wonderful, good, tasty food, not overly spiced but good, hardy, good wholesome food. Food that my mom says will stick to your bones, you don’t have to worry about it, some of us don’t need so much of that. But, anyway, it’s still is good food, and potatoes and carrots, those are things that you have, normally, in your cupboard that you can make a good stew with. If you can’t use the beef cubes, try ground chuck with it, as an alternative. You can make this with chicken, anyway that you want to, any meat can be used. But the basic thing is, make it into a pot pie and it will taste so good. Don’t forget, you can send for those recipes and be sure to join us the next time because it just wouldn’t be the same without you, right here At Home.
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